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<h1 align=center>How To Compile SQLite</h1>

<p>
SQLite is ANSI-C source code.
It must be compiled into machine code before it is useful.
This article is a guide to the various ways of compiling SQLite.
</p>

<p>This article does not contain a step-by-step recipe for compiling
SQLite.  That would be difficult since each development situation
is different.
Rather, this article describes and illustrates the principals behind the
compilation of SQLite.  Typical compilation commands are provided as examples
with the expectation that application developers can use these examples
as guidance for developing their own custom compilation procedures.
In other words, this article provides ideas and insights, not turnkey
solutions.</p>

<h2>Amalgamation Versus Individual Source Files</h2> 

<p>SQLite is built from literally hundreds of files of C code and script
spread across multiple directories.  The implementation of SQLite is pure
ANSI-C, but many of the C-language source code files are either either
generated or transformed by auxiliary C programs and AWK, SED, and TCL 
scripts prior to being incorporated into the finished SQLite library.
Building the necessary C programs and transforming and/or creating the
C-language source code for SQLite is a complex process.</p>

<p>To simplify matters, SQLite is also available as a pre-packaged
<a href="amalgamation.html">amalgamation</a> source code file: <b>sqlite3.c</b>.  The amalgamation is
a single file of ANSI-C code that implements the entire SQLite library.
The amalgamation is much easier to deal with.  Everything is contained
within a single code files, so it is easy to drop into the source tree
of a larger C or C++ program.  All the code generation and transformation
steps have already been carried out so there are no auxiliary C programs
to configure and compile and no scripts to run.  And, because the entire
library is contained in a single translation unit, compilers are able to
do more advanced optimizations resulting in a 5% to 10% performance 
improvement.  For these reasons, the amalgamation source file 
("<b>sqlite3.c</b>") is recommended for all applications.</p>

<blockquote><i>
The use of the <a href="amalgamation.html">amalgamation</a> is recommended for all applications.
</i></blockquote>

<p>Building SQLite directly from individual source code files is certainly
possible, but it is not recommended.  For some specialized applications, it
might be necessary to modify the build process in ways that cannot be done
using just the prebuilt amalgamation source file downloaded from the website.
For those situations, it is recommended that a customized amalgamation be
built (as described <a href="howtocompile.html#amal">below</a>)
and used.  In other words, even if a project requires building SQLite 
beginning with individual source files, it is still recommended that an
amalgamation source file be used as an intermediate step.</p>

<a name="cli"></a>

<h2>Compiling The Command-Line Interface</h2>

<p>A build of the <a href="sqlite.html">command-line interface</a> requires three source
files:</p>

<ul>
<li><b>sqlite3.c</b>: The SQLite amalgamation source file
<li><b>sqlite3.h</b>: The header files that accompanies sqlite3.c and 
defines the C-language interfaces to SQLite.
<li><b>shell.c</b>: The command-line interface program itself.
This is the C source code file that contains the definition of
the <b>main()</b> routine and the loop that prompts for user input
and passes that input into the SQLite database engine for processing.
</ul>

<p>All three of the above source files are contained in the
<a href="download.html">amalgamation tarball</a> available on the <a href="download.html">download page</a>.</p>

<p>To build the CLI, simply put these three files in the same directory
and compile them together.  The command to compile C programs varies from
one machine to the next but on unix systems typically looks 
something like this:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
gcc shell.c sqlite3.c -lpthread -ldl
</pre></blockquote>

<p>The pthreads library is needed to make SQLite threadsafe.  But
since the CLI is single threaded,  we could instruct SQLite to build
in a non-threadsafe mode and thereby omit the pthreads library:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
gcc -DSQLITE_THREADSAFE=0 shell.c sqlite3.c -ldl
</pre></blockquote>

<p>The -ldl library is needed to support dynamic loading, the
<a href="c3ref/load_extension.html">sqlite3_load_extension()</a> interface and the
<a href="lang_corefunc.html#load_extension">load_extension() SQL function</a>.  If these features are not required,
then they can be omitted using <a href="compile.html#omit_load_extension">SQLITE_OMIT_LOAD_EXTENSION</a> compile-time
option:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
gcc -DSQLITE_THREADSAFE=0 -DSQLITE_OMIT_LOAD_EXTENSION shell.c sqlite3.c
</pre></blockquote>

<p>One might want to provide other <a href="compile.html">compile-time options</a> such as
<a href="compile.html#enable_fts3">SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3</a> for full-text search or <a href="compile.html#enable_rtree">SQLITE_ENABLE_RTREE</a>
for the R*Tree search engine extension.  And one would normally to
specify some compiler optimization switches too.  (The precompiled
CLI available for download from the SQLite website uses "-Os".)
There are countless possible variations here.</p>

<p>The key point is this:  Building the CLI consists of compiling 
together two C-language files.   The <b>shell.c</b> file contains the
definition of the entry point and the user input loop and the
SQLite amalgamation <b>sqlite3.c</b> contains the complete implementation
of the SQLite library.</p>

<a name="tcl"></a>

<h2>Compiling The TCL Interface</h2>

<p>The TCL interface for SQLite is a small module that is added into
the regular amalgamation.  The result is a new amalgamated source
file called "<b>tclsqlite3.c</b>".  This single source file is all that
is needed to generate a shared library that can be loaded into a
standard 
<a href="http://wiki.tcl.tk/2541">tclsh</a> or 
<a href="http://wiki.tcl.tk/2364">wish</a> using the 
<a href="http://wiki.tcl.tk/9830">TCL load command</a>, or to generate a
standalone tclsh that comes with SQLite built in.
A copy of the tcl amalgamation
is included on the <a href="download.html">download page</a> as a file in the <a href="download.html">TEA tarball</a>.</p>

<p>To generate a TCL-loadable library for SQLite on Linux, the following
command will suffice:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
gcc -o libtclsqlite3.so -shared tclsqlite3.c -lpthread -ldl -ltcl
</pre></blockquote>

<p>Building shared libraries for Mac OS X and Windows is not nearly so simple,
unfortunately.  For those platforms it is best to use the configure script
and makefile that is included with the <a href="download.html">TEA tarball</a>.</p>

<p>To generate a standalone tclsh that is statically linked with SQLite,
use this compiler invocation:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
gcc -DTCLSH=1 tclsqlite3.c -ltcl -lpthread -ldl -lz -lm
</pre></blockquote>

<p>The trick here is the -DTCLSH=1 option.  The TCL interface module for
SQLite includes a <b>main()</b> procedure that initializes a TCL interpreter
and enters a command-line loop when it is compiled with -DTCLSH=1.  The
command above works on both Linux and Mac OS X, though one may need to adjust
the library options depending on the platform and which version of TCL one
is linking against.</p>

<a name="amal"></a>

<h2>Building The Amalgamation</h2>

<p>The versions of the SQLite amalgamation that are supplied on the
<a href="download.html">download page</a> are normally adequate for most users.  However, some
projects may want or need to build their own amalgamations.  A common
reason for building a custom amalgamation is in order to use certain
<a href="compile.html">compile-time options</a> to customize the SQLite library.  Recall that
the SQLite amalgamation contains a lot of C-code that is generated by
auxiliary programs and scripts.  Many of the compile-time
options effect this generated code and must be supplied to the code
generators before the amalgamation is assembled.  The set of 
compile-time options that must be passed into the code generators can
vary from one release of SQLite to the next, but at the time of this
writing (circa SQLite 3.6.20, 2009-11-04) the set of options that must
be known by the code generators includes:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="compile.html#enable_update_delete_limit">SQLITE_ENABLE_UPDATE_DELETE_LIMIT</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_altertable">SQLITE_OMIT_ALTERTABLE</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_analyze">SQLITE_OMIT_ANALYZE</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_attach">SQLITE_OMIT_ATTACH</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_autoincrement">SQLITE_OMIT_AUTOINCREMENT</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_cast">SQLITE_OMIT_CAST</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_compound_select">SQLITE_OMIT_COMPOUND_SELECT</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_conflict_clause">SQLITE_OMIT_CONFLICT_CLAUSE</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_explain">SQLITE_OMIT_EXPLAIN</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_foreign_key">SQLITE_OMIT_FOREIGN_KEY</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_pragma">SQLITE_OMIT_PRAGMA</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_reindex">SQLITE_OMIT_REINDEX</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_subquery">SQLITE_OMIT_SUBQUERY</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_tempdb">SQLITE_OMIT_TEMPDB</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_trigger">SQLITE_OMIT_TRIGGER</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_vacuum">SQLITE_OMIT_VACUUM</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_view">SQLITE_OMIT_VIEW</a>
<li><a href="compile.html#omit_virtualtable">SQLITE_OMIT_VIRTUALTABLE</a>
</ul>

<p>To build a custom amalgamation, first download the original individual
source files onto a unix or unix-like development platform.  (Any Linux or
Mac OS X machine will suffice.  Windows will work if loaded with
<a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a>.)  Be sure to get the original source
files not the "preprocessed source files".  One can obtain the complete
set of original source files either from the <a href="download.html">download page</a> or directly
from the <a href="http://www.sqlite.org/src">configuration management system</a>.</p>

<p>Suppose the SQLite source tree is stored in a directory named "sqlite".
Plan to construct the amalgamation in a parallel directory named (for
example) "bld".  First construct an appropriate Makefile by either
running the configure script at the top of the SQLite source tree, or by
making a copy of one of the template Makefiles at the top of the source tree.
Then hand edit this Makefile to include the desired compile-time options.
Finally run:</p>

<blockquote><pre>
make sqlite3.c
</pre></blockquote>

<p>The "sqlite3.c" make target will automatically construct the regular
"<b>sqlite3.c</b>" amalgamation source file, its header file
"<b>sqlite3.h</b>", and the "<b>tclsqlite3.c</b>" amalgamation source
file that includes the TCL interface.
Afterwards, the needed files can be copied into project directories and
compiled according to the procedures outlined above.</p>

